Regional planners and "smart growth" advocates gave a peek at what the Lehigh Valley might look like in the next three decades, and population demographics will have a big impact on the homes and neighborhoods we live in, the places we work and shop and the way we get around.

The full-day workshop, dubbed the Lehigh Valley Smart Growth Summit, was organized and hosted by RenewLV, whose executive director, Joyce Marin, set the tone for the day's nine breakout sessions by posing the question, "How can we work together to collaborate for a better Lehigh Valley."

The summit was held recently at the Holiday Inn Center City, Ninth and Hamilton streets, Allentown. The summit included a working lunch led by Tom Comitta, a nationally known "New Urbanist" planner, who heads Thomas Comitta Associates, Inc., a town planning and landscape architecture firm located in West Chester and Lancaster.

New urbanism is a planning strategy that promotes pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and a mix of job, housing and transportation options.

Looking ahead at the next three decades

Becky Bradley, the executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, gave workshop participants a look ahead at the next three decades in the Lehigh Valley. Bradley advocated for getting developers and residents involved in urban and rural planning, rather than constantly approaching growth and development from a contentious "not in my backyard" mentality.

Bradley said the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission looks at the "big picture – where you live, work, play, shop and indulge in recreational activities – and how it all relates to the road networks you use.

"Public surveys in the Lehigh Valley have been consistently finding that housing affordability, commuting, storm intensity, the possibility of flooding and emergency planning are the 'top of mind' topics residents want to see addressed," Bradley said.

"What we look like over the next 30 years has a great deal to do with the aging population in the area and the continued inflow of families from New Jersey and New York," Bradley said.

She said nearly 650,000 people call the greater Lehigh Valley home. That represents a 30 percent population increase over the past 30 years, and, she said, that number is projected to increase more than 11 percent per decade through 2040, when the population is projected to hit 874,000.

"We will see a significant increase of 65- to 74-year-olds as baby boomers – those 76 million people born between 1946 and 1964 – retire. There will not be enough people working to support that aging population," Bradley said. "That will have tremendous implications. There will be more jobs to fill than there are qualified people to fill them and there will be a large health care bubble over the next 30 years as services expand to meet the health needs of those aging boomers."

Boomer generation to have huge impact on the Lehigh Valley

The boomer generation will also have a big impact on Lehigh Valley housing needs as they age in place, Bradley said. "Pre-recession paradigms are changing," she said. "Boomers want wider choices. They don't like age-restricted communities. That trend is dead," Bradley asserted.

Graying Gen-X'ers, the generation born after the boomers, will also have an impact on life over the next three decades, Bradley said. "They are realistic, sarcastic and creative, and they selectively look for the best values in all they consume. Amenities and convenience are equal priorities to this generation. They are very much about function and they are strongly environmentally and socially conscious."

Gen X is the smallest generation in American history," Bradley said. "There are not going to be enough people working and paying taxes to support the baby-boomer generation. That factor alone is going to affect how we develop in the future.

"You'll find this generation working in the health care and high-skill sectors and commuting via a linked system that supports cars, bicycles, pedestrians and public transit," Bradley said.

Walkable communities a must

Millenials, those born starting in 2000, are highly motivated by a sense of community, Bradley said. They want a walkable environment, they are highly selective, want a myriad of choices and they value highly cultural and ethnic diversity.

"Walkable, intergenerational communities are going to be the new normal," she said.

Health care jobs are expected to increase, while jobs across the retail and service sectors will decline, Bradley said. "The Valley will provide more jobs than local residents will fill in the future, leading to an influx of workers from Carbon and Schuylkill counties particularly for lower-wage, unskilled jobs in Lehigh County.

These and other trends such as homes shrinking in size, cluster urban development and diverse, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods are not unique to the Lehigh Valley, Bradley said, though they will make the region competitively attractive.

Crime in the Lehigh Valley

Crime in the Lehigh Valley is another topic residents want addressed, surveys show.

A breakout workshop, moderated by Bangor Mayor John Brown, with panelists Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin; Colonial Police Chief Roy Seiple and Palmer Police Chief Larry Palmer looked at "modernizing how we fight crime." The premise of the three panelists was that smaller police forces for each separate municipality are not the most effective way to fight crime.

"Down the road, to be more efficient, we will need to see county-wide police law enforcement agencies," Martin said. "But we won't see it soon because there is too much parochialism and (municipal) turf defense."

"Consolidation is the only way to well-utilize the available dollars for law enforcement, and we need to find ways to find greater value in the available resources," Brown said.

Colonial Police Chief Seiple echoed the sentiment. "We are society's cleaning service, but we have to deal with (political) egos and personalities. Regionalism is the way to go, but nobody wants to give up their turf."

"Political resistance is counter to smart growth," Palmer said. "Police agencies are never included in smart growth and planning sessions," he said. "But we are out there every day. We could provide a lot of input about traffic flow, accident frequency and the impact of warehousing employment, and a lot of other daily life activities that impact the quality of life in the region."

While the summit did not pretend to find solutions to all the problems and challenges the next 30 years will bring to planners, municipal officials and law enforcement agencies in the Lehigh Valley, it did present a forum for ideas to be put on the table. And that's a good start.